The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen eBook

Suddenly we heard a tereng! tereng! teng! teng!
We looked round, and now found the reason why the
postillion had not been able to sound his horn; his
tunes were frozen up in the horn, and came out now
by thawing, plain enough, and much to the credit of
the driver; so that the honest fellow entertained
us for some time with a variety of tunes, without
putting his mouth to the horn—­“The
King of Prussia’s March,” “Over the
Hill and over the Dale,” with many other favourite
tunes; at length the thawing entertainment concluded,
as I shall this short account of my Russian travels.

Some travellers are apt to advance more than is
perhaps strictly true; if any of the company entertain
a doubt of my veracity, I shall only say to such,
I pity their want of faith, and must request they will
take leave before I begin the second part of my adventures,
which are as strictly founded in fact as those I have
already related.

CHAPTER VII

The Baron relates his adventures on a voyage to
North America, which are well worth the reader’s
attention—­Pranks of a whale—­A
sea-gull saves a sailor’s life—­The
Baron’s head forced into his stomach—­A
dangerous leak stopped a posteriori.

I embarked at Portsmouth in a first-rate English man-of-war,
of one hundred guns, and fourteen hundred men, for
North America. Nothing worth relating happened
till we arrived within three hundred leagues of the
river St. Laurence, when the ship struck with amazing
force against (as we supposed) a rock; however, upon
heaving the lead we could find no bottom, even with
three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance
the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension,
was, that the violence of the shock was such that
we lost our rudder, broke our bowsprit in the middle,
and split all our masts from top to bottom, two of
which went by the board; a poor fellow, who was aloft
furling the mainsheet, was flung at least three leagues
from the ship; but he fortunately saved his life by
laying hold of the tail of a large sea-gull, who brought
him back, and lodged him on the very spot from whence
he was thrown. Another proof of the violence of
the shock was the force with which the people between
decks were driven against the floors above them; my
head particularly was pressed into my stomach, where
it continued some months before it recovered its natural
situation. Whilst we were all in a state of astonishment
at the general and unaccountable confusion in which
we were involved, the whole was suddenly explained
by the appearance of a large whale, who had been basking,
asleep, within sixteen feet of the surface of the
water. This animal was so much displeased with
the disturbance which our ship had given him—­for
in our passage we had with our rudder scratched his
nose—­that he beat in all the gallery and
part of the quarter-deck with his tail, and almost
at the same instant took the mainsheet anchor, which